Businesses have long appreciated the importance of proper budgeting and management of expenses. Lack of fiscal control often leads to reduced profits or even bankruptcy. An essential element of fiscal control is careful management of an enterprise's procurement activities. While each enterprise may employ various procedures to control purchases in the name of the enterprise, most enterprises assign one or more managers to ensure compliance to defined procedures. The main responsibilities of such managers include, for example, managing the purchasing behaviors of the employees of the enterprise and managing the purchasing terms relating to each supplier.
To manage both employee purchasing behaviors and purchase terms, most large enterprises provide employee access to supplier catalogs. Traditional catalogs have been replaced by electronic catalogs in recent years, wherein an employee may quickly and conveniently locate specific products and/or services. It is fairly simple for a manger to only provide access to such catalogs for approved suppliers, however, it is a much more difficult task to manage the accessibility to individual products and services which may or may not be approved for purchase. For example, an electronics manufacturer may allow engineers to purchase machinery parts from an approved supplier; however, the manufacturer may not allow the same engineers to purchase chemicals from the same supplier. If the supplier's catalog includes both machinery parts and chemicals used in electronics manufacturing, then it becomes very difficult to restrict chemical purchases.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method for managing vendor catalogs within an enterprise to ensure that only products and services which have been approved are accessible to employees with purchasing authority. Further, a method is needed whereby catalogs can be monitored in order to alert a commodity manager when catalog information relating to a given product or service is changed. Such an alert will enable the manager to review the changes and ensure compliance with contract terms, spending limits, quality controls and the like.